I was part of it from the late 80s until the early 90s and vividly remember the chat rooms where at one time you could have smart people from all around the world participating: Asia, Middle East, Europe, North America and other regions.

All people had one thing in common: an enthusiastic vibe as they had immediately recognised what the benefits of near instant feedback were. World Wide before you had the WWW. It was addictive too (:

The most important Dutch relay node was HEARN which was named unlike the HNYKUN patterns at the University in Nijmegen (now Radboud Universiteit, but previously known as Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen hence the KUN in the HNYKUN pattern).

I had an account at HLERUL52 (chemistry department) at first, then later at HLERUL5 as well (computer technology department). Only later I got an SMTP email address jeroenp@rulfc1.leidenuniv.nl.

Anyway: based on the list of Bitnet/Earn links and connections below, you’d think you could plot a route. The example is between me and a cyber friends who – in 1992 – I finally met in real life:

But that table is not the only one, the actual routing tables were generated from LINKSWT files (see below), which means that HEARN and DEARN had a direct connection collapsing the (expensive) transatlantic steps 3..6 into one.

#

Node

Connection

Description

System

Date

o

HLERUL52

HLERUL5

Uni Leiden, Netherlands, NL

JNET

89216

1

HLERUL5

HLERUL2

Uni Leiden, Netherlands, NL

JNET

89216

2

HLERUL2

HEARN

Uni Leiden, Netherlands, NL

JES2

89216

3

HEARN

FRMOP22

Uni Nijmegen, Netherlands, NL

RSCS

89216

4

FRMOP22

CUNYVMV2

CNUSC, Montpellier, France, FR

JES2

89219

5

CUNYVMV2

CUNYVM

CUNY University Computer Ctr, US

RSCS

89180

6

DEARN

CUNYVMV2

EARN Central Node, Germany, DE

RSCS

89216

7

DBNGMD21

DEARN

GMD Bonn, Germany, DE

JES2

89216

8

DBNRHRZ2

DBNGMD21

RHRZ Uni Bonn, Germany, DE

JES2

89216

9

DHAFEU11

DBNRHRZ2

Fern-Uni Hagen, Germany, DE

RSCS

89216

After I got distracted this far, I collected this set of links with historically relevant information (some are in the Web Archive as the original pages have vanished by now) and had a chat with Fred Melssen: